arXiv subjects

Jyoti Prakash

Publications and source records attributed to Jyoti Prakash.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Structural and dynamical properties of Tidal dwarf galaxies in the tails and bridge of the Guitar galaxy Arp 105

We present a multi-wavelength (far-ultraviolet to infrared) analysis of two tidal dwarf galaxy (TDG) candidates and a tidal bridge in the interacting system Arp 105 at $z = 0.029$ in the Abell 1185 cluster. Far-ultraviolet observations obtained with the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope onboard AstroSat reveal strong FUV emission from the tidal galaxies Arp~105N and Arp~105S, indicating recent star formation. In Arp~105N, strong nebular emission lines and large equivalent widths $EW(H\alpha)=77.6\pm1.3$ $\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}}$ and $EW(H\beta)=15.8\pm1.7$ $\overset{\circ}{\mathrm {A}}$ imply a dominant starburst age of $\sim$6 - 10~Myr under an instantaneous-burst assumption, while the FUV emission suggests star formation sustained over the past $\sim100 - 200$~Myr. The relatively high metallicity, $\sim2/3,Z_\odot$ (based on the strong-line method), is consistent with expectations for a tidal dwarf galaxy formed from material inherited from the host galaxy. Together, these results suggest that Arp~105N hosts a composite stellar population, consisting of older stars stripped from the host galaxy and younger stars formed in situ. Spectral energy distribution modeling yields stellar masses of $5.75\times10^{9}$, $0.8\times10^{9}$, and $6.8\times10^{9},\rm M_\odot$ for Arp~105N, Arp~105S, and the tidal bridge, respectively. Based on the dynamical mass estimate from VLA HI measurements for Arp~105N and based on CFHT H$\alpha$ kinematics for A105S, they have a dynamical-to-baryonic mass ratio of $\sim1.95$ and $\sim1.30$, respectively, indicating a deficiency of dark matter. Further observations, particularly integral field spectroscopy and high-resolution 21~cm observations, may provide better constraints into the kinematics and improve understanding of TDG formation.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2026

Towards Analyzing N-language Polyglot Programs

Polyglot programming is gaining popularity as developers integrate multiple programming languages to harness their individual strengths. With the recent popularity of platforms like GraalVM and other multi-language runtimes, creating and managing these systems has become much more feasible. However, current research on analyzing multilingual programs mainly focuses on two languages, leaving out the increasing complexity of systems that use three or more. For example, modern web systems often link JavaScript, WebAssembly, and Rust within the same execution chain. This paper envisions the landscape of software systems with three-language polyglot communication. We identify fundamental challenges in analyzing them and propose a conceptual roadmap to advance static analysis techniques to address them. Our vision aims to stimulate discussion and inspire new research directions toward scalable, language-agnostic analysis frameworks for next-generation polyglot systems.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2023

Unifying Pointer Analyses for Polyglot Inter-operations through Summary Specialization

Modular analysis of polyglot applications is challenging because heap object flows across language boundaries must be resolved. The state-of-the-art analyses for polyglot applications have two fundamental limitations. First, they assume explicit boundaries between the host and the guest language to determine inter-language dataflows. Second, they rely on specific analyses of the host and guest languages. The former assumption is impractical concerning recent advancements in polyglot programming techniques, while the latter disregards advances in pointer analysis of the underlying languages. In this work, we propose to extend existing pointer analyses with a novel summary specialization technique so that points-to set across language boundaries can be unified. Our novel technique leverages various combinations of host and guest analyses with minor modifications. We demonstrate the efficacy and generalizability of our approach by evaluating it with two polyglot language models: Java-C communication via Android's NDK and Java-Python communication in GraalVM.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2022

Our fingerprints don't fade from the Apps we touch: Fingerprinting the Android WebView

Numerous studies demonstrated that browser fingerprinting is detrimental to users' security and privacy. However, little is known about the effects of browser fingerprinting on Android hybrid apps -- where a stripped-down Chromium browser is integrated into an app. These apps expand the attack surface by employing two-way communication between native apps and the web. This paper studies the impact of browser fingerprinting on these embedded browsers. To this end, we instrument the Android framework to record and extract information leveraged for fingerprinting. We study over 20,000 apps, including the most popular apps from the Google play store. We exemplify security flaws and severe information leaks in popular apps like Instagram. Our study reveals that fingerprints in hybrid apps potentially contain account-specific and device-specific information that identifies users across multiple devices uniquely. Besides, our results show that the hybrid app browser does not always adhere to standard browser-specific privacy policies.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2020

A Large Scale Analysis of Android-Web Hybridization

Many Android applications embed webpages via WebView components and execute JavaScript code within Android. Hybrid applications leverage dedicated APIs to load a resource and render it in a WebView. Furthermore, Android objects can be shared with the JavaScript world. However, bridging the interfaces of the Android and JavaScript world might also incur severe security threats: Potentially untrusted webpages and their JavaScript might interfere with the Android environment and its access to native features. No general analysis is currently available to assess the implications of such hybrid apps bridging the two worlds. To understand the semantics and effects of hybrid apps, we perform a large-scale study on the usage of the hybridization APIs in the wild. We analyze and categorize the parameters to hybridization APIs for 7,500 randomly selected and the 196 most popular applications from the Google Playstore as well as 1000 malware samples. Our results advance the general understanding of hybrid applications, as well as implications for potential program analyses, and the current security situation: We discovered thousands of flows of sensitive data from Android to JavaScript, the vast majority of which could flow to potentially untrustworthy code. Our analysis identified numerous web pages embedding vulnerabilities, which we exemplarily exploited. Additionally, we discovered a multitude of applications in which potentially untrusted JavaScript code may interfere with (trusted) Android objects, both in benign and malign applications.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2019

PointEval: On the Impact of Pointer Analysis Frameworks

Pointer analysis is a foundational analysis leveraged by various static analyses. Therefore, it gathered wide attention in research for decades. Some pointer analysis frameworks are based on succinct declarative specifications. However, these tools are heterogeneous in terms of the underlying intermediate representation (IR), heap abstraction, and programming methodology. This situation complicates a fair comparison of these frameworks and thus hinders further research. Consequently, the literature lacks an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of these tools. In this work, we evaluate two major frameworks for pointer analysis, WALA and Doop, on the DaCapo set of benchmarks. We compare the pointer analyses available in Wala and Doop, and conclude that---even though based on a declarative specification---Doop provides a better pointer analysis than Wala in terms of precision and scalability. We also compare the two IRs used in Doop, i.e., Jimple from the Soot framework and IR from the Wala framework. Our evaluation shows that in the majority of the benchmarks Soot's IR gives a more precise and scalable pointer analysis. Finally, we propose a micro-benchmark \emph{PointerBench}, for which we manually validate the points-to statistics to evaluate the results of these tools.

cs.SE↗